So I recently finally decided to win at finding a partner and dating in general. I introspected, and noticed that I had been falling into a ton of the common failure modes of self-defeatism(?), so the most important lessons that I wanted to put into practice were on how to make a real effort and monitor my brain to catch as many errors of thought or irrational decisions or bias patterns or other things that my brain would use to fight against me and to prevent me from maximizing my odds of success. The difficulty lies in combining and applying all the knowledge on dating and attraction I've gained from many sources while sticking to my principles and being completely myself, and still winning despite those two major handicaps.

Sufficient motivation, a goal that matters even to the subconscious, and constant self-monitoring seems to be doing the trick, even given only the time I've spent on LessWrong (<6 months) and very little systematic training.

And yes, "seems to be doing the trick" implies some form of tangible results. After two days of profiling, making estimates and analyzing places or methods to find the kind of persons I'd be interested in, I had already found someone that I wanted to care about. A few days later and things are going very well, but it's too early to be conclusive. However, the fact that it only took two days from the start of efforts until finding and being in positive communication with someone is in itself impressive to/for me. Normally, I'd be mucking around in the dark for weeks or months, usually giving up long before anything good happens. It's like I just woke up to my idiocy, took the flashlight out of my pocket, and turned it on.

I've made a note in my electronic calendar(s) to come back in one month and report on further progress. I plan to continue using more and more LessWrongian lessons and techniques to keep winning, and since this first attempt at challenging the difficult and making real efforts deliberately has proven so successful so far, it is a very strong motivating factor towards applying it in all other aspects of my life.